Alexandersmap

    Category: Relationships

    • Missing the Signs

      After dinner with my bride at a local tavern, she saw a neighbor across the room and went over to say hello. We would see this woman and her husband now and then at restaurants and joke that we never seemed to see them in the neighborhood, where they lived just across the street from us. This time she was having a drink alone, and she explained that her husband had passed away in July with express wishes to not make a big deal of it.

      A big deal of it… We were shocked at his passing and wondered how we’d missed the signs of his absence since then. Construction project at home, a new puppy, friends staying over for a time, and vacation time all conspired this summer to make us less aware, but so unaware that we didn’t notice the absence of a neighbor for three months?

      It turns out we did notice—we just didn’t put it together. Different people mowing the lawn. The trash barrels rolled out at a different time than they used to be rolled out. The pickup truck no longer in the driveway. All of it washing over us as we made our way home.

      When you live in a place for years, you get to know some of the neighbors quite well. You watch their children grow up and move out, you watch relationships end, new ones begin, and people pass away from this world. When you think back, most of the time we’re just a witness to the passing of time, not an active participant in the lives of those around us. Some people leave their struggles behind closed doors.

      The details mattered a great deal, and we reflected on what we missed. How we might have helped more had we only known. We are each on our own journey, shared with others but in the end ours alone. We have some touchstone moments with our fellow travelers that resonate more than others, but it’s up to each of us to weave those into a tapestry of connection. When our time ends, all that remains is the memories and moments that linger with others.

      Our neighbor gave us a sign: Help needed. Too late for her husband but not for her. One more touchstone moment connecting us to someone just across the street but seemingly so far away.

    • The Most Important Pursuit

      “Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.” — Leo Tolstoy, The Emperor’s Three Questions

      Tolstoy’s story resonates because it’s timeless. Consider: What is the best time to do each thing? Now, because we are not timeless ourselves. Who are the most important people to work with? The person we’re with in this moment, because there is no guarantee that the person we are interacting with is not the very last person we’ll ever interact with. What is the most important thing to do at all times? The most essential thing we can do in our brief dance together is to find happiness right here and now.

      I am an active practitioner of the three questions because of how I was raised, not because I sought the advice of Tolstoy, but his philosophy resonates because of the universal truth in the words. Shouldn’t we be present in this moment, with full attention directed towards the person we’re with, with the sincere objective of making the moment joyful for both parties?

      Consider the most recent interaction you had with a stranger. Say, the person who served you breakfast the last time you went out for it. Do you treat that person as a servant or as a fellow traveler on this trip around the sun? If the roles were reversed, how would you expect to be treated by them? Shouldn’t the golden rule apply in every such situation?

      The thing is, I have people in my life who roll their eyes when I engage in conversation with random strangers—there he goes again. But the point of each of these engagements is to acknowledge that we’re all in the same orbit at the same moment. We may never pass this way again. In most cases, the chances are extremely high that we won’t. So we ought to make the most of that moment.

      We know the world is full of angry people. I often get spun up at the unfairness in the world, and the sheer cruelty of some people who don’t see the worth in anyone but themselves. We all witness bad behavior that is the antithesis of the golden rule. But we don’t have to swim in that sea of misery ourselves. Why splash around where so many have drowned?

      Here’s the thing: We all want to live a fulfilling and joyful life. To be actively engaged in living is to be in the game in every moment, not just a few chosen highlights. So embrace the opportunity to be fully alive now, whatever now brings to you. The thing about those nows is that they tend to string together into a pretty amazing life.

    • Connection in Solitude

      “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Another example of a Thoreau word-explosion-as-paragraph, and one I wanted to compress into a smaller bite, mind you, but didn’t have the heart to. Henry was never lonely because he surrounded himself with an ample supply of words. His work resonates because he combined so many of them into insightful and timeless nuggets that we still find nutritious today. For a guy who spent so much time alone, he still manages to connect with so many.

      The difference between solitude and loneliness is very much aligned with what we perceive ourselves to be doing with the time. Active engagement in meaningful work, expressed creativity, meditation, exercise and prayer are each forms of reaching outside of ourselves for connection to the greater energy force that hums all around us. I write this knowing the words will come, and I’m but an editor for the muse. How can you feel alone in such moments?

      Many people encountered solitude during the pandemic and were forced to reconcile what it meant for them. I found it to be a time of connection with family, who otherwise would have been off doing their own thing as I did mine. It made no difference whether I was alone in a home office or in a hotel room, for solitude is solitude anywhere—but it doesn’t have to be loneliness. Feeling alone is to look for connection with the universe and finding no answer.

      There’s no doubt that surrounding ourselves with the right people leads to a happier, more fulfilling and longer life. With any strong group dynamic we rise to meet others, even as they rise to meet us, providing a lift to the entire group. Community gives us momentum and mutual support, solitude gives us the elbow room to mine the best out of ourselves. Don’t we each need both to live a full life?

    • There ‘neath the Oak’s Bough

      Now there’s a beautiful river in the valley ahead
      There ‘neath the oak’s bough soon we will be wed
      Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees
      I’ll wait for you
      And should I fall behind
      Wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.” — J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

      The song If I Should Fall Behind is forever a part of my identity, not just because it was our wedding song once upon a time, but because we’ve used it as our guiding principle. In this way, I wonder sometimes if the song chose us, rather than us choosing the song. It’s always been there in the background, whispering just how to keep this thing going year-after-year.

      Relationships are built on patience and each person carrying their share of the load. Sometimes one person carries more than the other, but over time it just seems to even out. There’s no score-keeping in a healthy marriage anyway, and the sooner you realize that the sooner you get to the serious work of foundation-building. Foundations matter a great deal in happy homes.

      Time is a bear that throws all kinds of bitter twists into an otherwise magical life. We get distracted by the madness of the world and spend more time than we ought to focused on a transactional life of people and titles and things that ultimately don’t matter as much as the person you committed a lifetime to. But when both of you carry on, patient and present, everything else falls by the wayside.

      We built a home five years after that wedding on a plot of land deep in the valley with a large oak tree in the front yard and another out in back. Neither of us thought of the line in the song, we just liked the oak trees and the feel of the land they grew on. We’ve called that spot in the valley ‘neath the oak’s bough home ever since. It’s funny how things work out just like a song when you put the work in to make it so.

    • A Good Long Time

      “Drink without getting drunk
      Love without suffering jealousy
      Eat without overindulging
      Never argue
      And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave”
      ― Dan Buettner, Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way

      This world may just be a complicated mess. This world may be a miracle of experience and wonder. We skate between the two hoping to hold our optimal line as long as possible. The trick, I should think, is to lean into miracle and wonder lest we stumble into a complicated mess. We all step in it now and then, but a good life begins with the direction we lean.

      Inevitably, we settle into a life that works for us. Sure, “settle” may sound like a compromise, and naturally there’s compromise in every happy life, but settle in this context meaning to realize over time that this is what you’ve wanted all along. The rhythm suits you. In rowing you settle into a steady state that you can maintain for the duration of the race, with a few high cadence sprints mixed in strategically. Life is a lot like this.

      Some people never find that rhythm, and the dance feels a bit off-kilter for them. This is a clear sign that finding another dance club is essential. If the music and fellow dancers aren’t for you, why stay? A lifetime in the wrong beat with two left feet is no way to live. Turn the beat around, as they say (I’ve just betrayed myself as a punny uncle).

      Digging into the lifestyles of people that live a long life, as Buettner does, you begin to see that the people who live best and sometimes the longest are those who simply fall into the right rhythm. Eat well, walk, lean into the company of life-minded people with whom you can share a story and a laugh with. Simple, really. And don’t you think that life should be less complicated anyway?

      At the risk of introducing one-too-many analogies into a single blog post, allow me just one more: The fire that burns the longest is fueled by substance. Oak burns longer than pine, which in turn burns longer than kindling. When we build our lives around substance and meaning, we too can burn a good long time. That’s the thing, isn’t it? To not just live a long life, but a good life. That’s not settling at all—that’s something we reach for and hold onto for dear life.

    • Letting Go

      To live in this world
      you must be able
      to do three things:
      to love what is mortal;
      to hold it
      against your bones knowing
      your own life depends on it;
      and, when the time comes to let it go,
      to let it go.
      — Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

      This is the time of year when the leaves release from the trees and drift in the breeze in waves, becoming a force of nature in their return to the earth. It’s easy to see them as alive—characters in their freedom from the branches that once held them. The tree lets them go in their time, and releases their burden that they may survive another winter season.

      Humans hold on to their own things. Homes full of stuff, people who sap our vitality, positions of honor that sap our soul. Why do we hold so tightly to things that, deep down, we know must be released?

      Identity. We begin to believe that we are that person with that job, or the one who raises those children. For awhile we may be the soccer parent or the blogger, the hiker or sailor or the life of the party. Perhaps even that crazy uncle who says the most ridiculous things and prods nieces and nephews out of their shells. Identity is a tricky thing indeed. We are grounded in it, and let it drive our every decision.

      Human beings always cling to things.
      Practice begins when you stop clinging.
      — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      Those trees offer a lesson, don’t they? The tree is rooted in place, reaching for the sky, making the most of whatever season it happens to be in. The leaves are not the tree, but a part of it, nurtured in one season and released in another. Everything has its time. No, the leaves aren’t the tree at all, simply a part of it. It’s the roots that matter far more for the tree to survive.

      What are we rooted in? What do we hold on to far longer than we should? What do we need to let go of to survive another winter and thrive when the season changes in our favor? When the time comes, let go.

    • The Cover of October Skies

      Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
      With the stars up above in your eyes
      A fantabulous night to make romance
      ‘Neath the cover of October skies
      And all the leaves on the trees are falling
      To the sound of the breezes that blow
      You know I’m tryin’ to please to the calling
      Of your heartstrings that play soft and low
      You know the night’s magic seems to whisper and hush
      You know the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush
      Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love?
      — Van Morrison, Moondance

      It’s no coincidence that we are drawn outdoors in October. In New Hampshire, the foliage is strikingly beautiful on some trees this year, while others have barely begun to turn. Strange what a year of near-constant rain can do to a tree’s inclination to dress up for the party. But the show must go on nonetheless, stragglers will inevitably catch up in their time. For it’s all about the shrinking days now. If leaves are the flowers of autumn, then they’re more like the blossoms of a fruit tree, announcing their time in the sun is over with a brilliant dance in the breeze on their return to the earth. Don’t we owe it to them to bear witness?

      I dwell in such things. I have a photographers eye and a philosopher’s mind, and though perhaps neither may ever be fully realized in production each sneaks out now and again. We each aspire to mastery, don’t we? Mostly I hear the call to bring the beautiful to light. It falls on people like us to keep reminding the world that it’s worth paying attention to the magic now and then in our own shrinking days.

      To reach our potential we must be attentive to every detail, and we must put ourselves in the mix. On a crisp Sunday afternoon I spent time at a four-year-old’s birthday party, gingerly holding her infant second cousin like a football, to celebrate the next generation tasked with realizing a brighter future. I spent time at a quiet graveyard, reminding those who couldn’t quite realize a full life of their own that they aren’t forgotten. That they did enough. The two sides of the spectrum dancing under the cover of the same brilliant October sky. Some leaves shine golden in their time, some have arrived back to earth. We are the witnesses to each, biding our time on a quest for mastery.

    • Somethings

      “Recall a simple and ancient truth: the subject of knowledge cannot exist independently from the object of knowledge. To see is to see something. To hear is to hear something. To be angry is to be angry over something. Hope is hope for something. Thinking is thinking about something. When the object of knowledge (the something) is not present, there can be no subject of knowledge.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

      We are each connected to the world in big ways and small. The things we focus on, our somethings, are the essence of that connection. When we become aware of these connections we immediately see our place in the world differently. We are not independent observers to the world, we are very much a part of it.

      So when we inevitably ignore our mother’s well-meaning advice and talk to strangers, is it a voyage of discovery or do we put up walls? Walls come in many forms, from being reserved to working to be overly clever. To be genuine and open is to welcome connection. It’s our gateway to discovery.

      My primary purpose in life is to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. That bridge is built on human connections—trusted relationships built one genuine and open connection at a time. That connection is substantial, and indeed means something. After all, it’s the stuff of life.

    • Stable Centers

      “Continue to progress, do not stagnate. Consider a spinning top. It moves around a stable center. It spins and spins until it finally falls over, exhausted” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      In this blog I refer a lot to Stephen Covey’s concept of pushing the flywheel, and having momentum in our lives through rigid positive habits. The thing about momentum we sometimes forget is that it’s not about the spinning, though surely action is essential, but about the stable center. We may spin like a whirling dervish, but without a stable center we quickly spiral out of control. Like centrifugal force, positive momentum abhors instability.

      We see this in people, companies and political parties that have lost the thing that made them stable. Sports teams may peak at the level of their superstars, but unravel over the course of a season without strong leadership from the role players that are the true foundation of a team. We call them the glue that holds a team together, or lifts it up when things go poorly. It’s those people in an organization who exemplify how things ought to be done and lead by example.

      That stable center in an individual is our morality and sense of purpose. It’s our why, to borrow from Simon Sinek. When we have this in our lives, we do the work that must be done, we don’t skip over the little things that mean a lot, we are proactive in our days, and we have agency over our lives. Why do we get up every day to start anew? It’s often the people in our lives we hold most dear, isn’t it? Family and friends offer community and a sense of place. Teams, congregations and great company cultures do this as well. We need something bigger than ourselves to make our lives larger and more meaningful. When we have it we feel complete, when we don’t we crave it and desperately seek it out.

      Stable centers are usually obvious to us when we have them in our lives. We know what centers us, because our life revolves around these why’s. We are capable of spinning ourselves into greater and greater orbits when our footing is solid. Finding stable centers thus becomes as essential to our growth as establishing good habits and surrounding ourselves with the right people. In fact, when we do these things, we find that we ourselves become a stable center for others. And isn’t that a magical feeling?

    • My Love and I

      The water is wide, I can’t cross o’er
      And neither do I have wings to fly
      Give me a boat, carry two
      And both shall row
      My love and I
      — Pete Seeger, The Water is Wide

      There’s a marriage occurring in the family this weekend, and it got me thinking about my own. I’m approaching three decades together, which makes us uniquely qualified to talk about long-term relationships, I suppose. But then I look at my in-laws, married for 61 years and counting, through the epic highs and devastating lows that a couple of humans can experience together. It makes me wonder about the years to follow, having ridden that roller coaster along with them for almost half of their marriage. As my favorite Navy pilot used to say, “I’ve seen the future and I don’t like it”. But we can still make the most of it. Amor fati.

      Life’s challenges are best endured together. We are each distracted and busy, annoyed at times with the world and with each other, but we return to each other always. A marriage can be seen as a boat that rides out the storms and keeps a relationship alive. Or you can look at it as a contract between two able-bodied people who agree to stick it out together when one or both are not so able-bodied anymore. We generally meet our mate when we’re at our peak fitness level and full of potential. They see that potential and bet on us, as we do with them. Sometimes that bet works out really well, and sometimes it doesn’t. But the thing about humans is that we’re at our best when we invest ourselves in others. The load is heavy enough as it is. Better to carry it together.

      Now everyone dreams of love lasting and true
      Oh but you and I know what this world can do
      So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
      And I’ll wait for you, and if I should fall behind wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      We forget sometimes, in our focus on meeting the moment, that we are life partners until the end. Life reminds us of our fragility, in body and in spirit. We lift each other up or drag each other down, and this becomes habituated. Simply put, the dynamic in a relationship becomes our normal. Best to have a partner that lifts with us, rather than drag us down constantly. I’m blessed with one of those. I hope you are or will be too.

      So how does a marriage endure? There’s no secret, really. It’s all the things you’d expect: patience and love, listening and lingering in moments together, appreciating the best and accepting the less-than-best about each other. But I think it’s mostly about feeling gratitude for having found someone willing to row that boat with you across the wide water. Someone who will wait for us to catch up to where we ought to be, as we will for them when they fall a step behind (knowing deep down it’s usually us falling behind). There are no secrets to long relationships, there’s only the commitment to seeing it through.